Why did it take this long to understand

[E-Stat]

They didnt experiment enough with 2.

You'll have to include the late Jack Renner of Telarc fame in that accusation as he followed the Fine's lead. I had to smile about the requirement he stipulated to Dr. Stockham for using digital...

Two works fine for smaller scale works like the solo piano and guitar Windham Hill content I posted earlier by Liz Story and Michael Hedges. They were recorded direct to two track with excellent results. And they exhibit depth.

 

[G.D.T.R.F.B.]

No problem.

 

[G.D.T.R.F.B.]

While I agree with the point I was trying to make, I did overlook a few things as the 3 mic Mercury Living Presence mixes were made 50+ years ago.

From the first article of 3 posted by E-Stat.

“Today's engineers also have greater choices in omnidirectional mics. Small capsule electrostatic models offer nearly ruler-flat response through the audible frequencies. Combined with modern, high- resolution digital recording, one can expect a very clean and natural sound field. Keep in mind that the elimination of microphone frequency bumps and dips (as well as a tape recorder's inherent colorations) will also critically expose shortcomings of any acoustic environments. ”

Mics are much better today and there are a lot more options like various bumps and dips available in different mic frequency responses, DSP, etc. I have not heard any of these recordings, how are they? It sounds like the Fines dedicated much of their lives to these recordings, kudos to them!

 

[RobRoy]

Aren't one's ears really just two mics..., yet they perceive depth. The perception of depth is a function of the time delay between the instruments/singer with the further pieces having more delay and the nearer having less.

Wouldn't this then also occur with a pair of microphones?

Have you ever noticed that you don't perceive stereo underwater? It's because sound travels so fast underwater the time difference between ears is so short that it sounds like mono. But I suspect if you spent your entire life underwater you would adapt and hear stereo.

Same here. It's why I keep mentioning binaural. With binaural the mics are roughly the same distance apart as your ears. You are accustomed to receiving that information with that ear placement and the material of your head around it. So really good binaural headphones capture that and headphones reproduce it very close to what you would have heard if your head was there instead of the mic. Other mic techniques don't mimic that. Even an orchestra, band or chamber band recorded with two mics typically have the mics several (if not dozens) of feet apart. This produces distored "audio paralax".

I made that up.

I sometimes take 3D photos by taking two separate pictures of the same thing from airliners of clouds and the ground, but the photos are taken from hundreds of feet apart because of the speed of the plane. But when you view them in a 3D viewer, you see amazing 3D affects that a typical human viewer would only see as two dimensional because their eyes are too close together. I call it "distorted paralax". And the same is true in a sense with stereo mics that are placed some distance from each other.

 

[G.D.T.R.F.B.]

I believe that for a given person (on their system, blah blah), there is one and only one ideal location for each mic (ideally omnidirectional IMHO as they give the best sense of 3-d space). It is “just” a matter of finding these two precise locations. I will take this over the binaural version any day, and Ive done lots of both. Having said that, Ive not heard any dummy head binaural recordings made with higher end/quality mics than the DPA 4061s, through high quality cans. Perhaps I am not listening critically enough, or my system is not resolving enough, but I have never heard this paralax effect, nor do I ever remember it being brought up on dat-heads digest back in the day. When I first got into DATs back in 95, I ordered a Sony 60ES, Tascam DA-P1 w external battery, and some cables from the Oade brothers at HiFi Sales and Service in Georgia. To get me started, they made me 10 clones of their masters for “tradebait”. They hooked me up and included some of their spread omni(directional mics) dead shows that very few people had. From those 10 shows I ended up with over 2000 more, and that does not include my 500+ masters.

Dans Gans interviews Jim and Doug Oade
https://soundcloud.com/dgans/oade-interview
If you dont want to listen to the whole thing, just listen starting at about 5:50 for a minute, then at about the 19 minute mark. About 21:30 they talk about a 4 mic “wall of sound” technique with tremendous success, similar to what the Fines were doing, but with 4 mics. I’ll have to check out some of those Living Presence recordings. Though I bet if they could easily position 2 omnidirectional mics in their choice of locations, they would...

https://www.oade.com/

 

[G.D.T.R.F.B.]

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lTVXpsFIb0NfT1uRRv5cje7cVPpWML4eE

https://soundcloud.com/cool-water-canyon/sets/select-cuts
I recorded songs 2, 3, 5, 8, 10, 11,13, 14, 15, 16, and 17. Sometime around late 98/early 99 I upgraded from bass mod Oktava MC012 (card, super card, and omni caps) to Schoeps CMXY-4V(fixed cardioid pattern, rotatable caps, mic “simulates” coincident X-Y recording technique which uses differences in intensity of sound waves hitting the caps to produce the stereo effect. But two things cant be in the same place at the same time so there is an ever so slight time delay as well. In this case, even more so than if using 2 separate mics to record coincident x-y. Something I just had to accept.

I did not record the first show here, but the 1-15-2000 SOHO and 5/31/2000 Wildcat Lounge would be Schoeps CMXY-4V>Grace Designs Lunatec V2>probably a Tascam DA-P1 but maybe a Sony SBM-1. In corner at Wildcat like always but SOHO was more than likely centered about 50’ back from stage, rectangular room about 100’x 175’, mics at 90 degrees, about 7’ up.
https://soundcloud.com/cool-water-canyon

Looks like OZO is scheduled to play SOHO on 8/7.
https://www.sohosb.com/

I didnt know that stuff was up there until now. I split most of my masters (>100) bw two of the members for the cost of blanks and became a climbing bum for a few years. GR8 band, super cool guys (their manager went on to manage David Hasselhoff after all), Andrew (Drew) Allen is an amazing guitarist, and hotties were everywhere.

If you look at the picture next to the first song, Anna’s Gold, on the soundcloud select-cuts link above, there is the box of dats that went to Jesse, though I did not tape the Piedmont Park recording. Though






More recent Jesse Tyre Karp (CWC rhythm guitarist, singing, but not driving).
https://buzzbands.la/2017/05/08/premiere-grand-southern-sleeptalking/

 

[toddalin]

It is my recollection that Tusk was recorded on a 3-channel machine, at least the USC Marching Band's tracks.

 

[Guest159]

Have you ever noticed that you don't perceive stereo underwater? It's because sound travels so fast underwater the time difference between ears is so short that it sounds like mono. But I suspect if you spent your entire life underwater you would adapt and hear stereo.

Same here. It's why I keep mentioning binaural. With binaural the mics are roughly the same distance apart as your ears. You are accustomed to receiving that information with that ear placement and the material of your head around it. So really good binaural headphones capture that and headphones reproduce it very close to what you would have heard if your head was there instead of the mic. Other mic techniques don't mimic that. Even an orchestra, band or chamber band recorded with two mics typically have the mics several (if not dozens) of feet apart. This produces distored "audio paralax".

I made that up.

I sometimes take 3D photos by taking two separate pictures of the same thing from airliners of clouds and the ground, but the photos are taken from hundreds of feet apart because of the speed of the plane. But when you view them in a 3D viewer, you see amazing 3D affects that a typical human viewer would only see as two dimensional because their eyes are too close together. I call it "distorted paralax". And the same is true in a sense with stereo mics that are placed some distance from each other.

I'm glad almost nothing is recorded the way you suggest and that recording and mastering engineers aren't so simplistic.

 

[G.D.T.R.F.B.]

CMXY-4V -Compact Microphone simulating X-Y coincident recording technique using Schoeps’ 4V capsule. The V stands for vertical. NOTE: the Rode was recorded in MONO so it NOT an apples/apples comparison. First will be Schoeps in Mono though. Rode is always mono. The guy on the right is too low in mix/too far away and lady on left to a lesser extent as well, but it shows that the coincident x-y recording technique does indeed produce a stereo effect.

 

[RobRoy]

I'm glad almost nothing is recorded the way you suggest and that recording and mastering engineers aren't so simplistic.

I strongly agree with that sentiment. Binaural recordings are an interesting thing to impress your friends with, kinda like the Power and Majesty lp of lightning, rain and trains.

But at the end of the day, binaural recordings are like 3D movies.

 

[G.D.T.R.F.B.]

Thank you for archiving RobRoy! It is wonderful to see your enthusiasm. The most important thing is you enjoy it and it is a wonderful hobby. If you watched the oade video, one of the first things Jim says is that he is always learning from his experiences and getting better at predicting where to place mics for best sound. The other thing is its like college tests sometimes. Recordings you think will turn out sounding great....don’t and ones that you would turn out average or worse can end up sounding very nice. >>90% of the shows turn out “ok/good” but the gems (like phish 12-1-96 pauley pavillion, oktava) are few and far between. I mail ordered to about 6 different addresses and got one set of tickets in a real nice location. This combined with no nearby screamers.

Binaural recordings can sound fantastic, even when played back through speakers. I did a trade with the biggest PJ taper/trader who was on dat-heads digest (people who record concerts, generally jam bands, to dat) back in the day and said just pick me out your favorite show.

9-29-96 Downing Stadium. Awesome recording, awesome show, like I am there!

“This 3 hour show is easily the best from the 1996 tour, with an amazing setlist, and amazing band and crowd energy, considering it was played through rain and mud. Touring on the back of 'No Code', it features 9 tracks from the album.”

And that was Core Sounds/Len Moskowitz’s basic/only model of binaural mics that retailed for about 200 and I think made in the shell of a .22 round with a modified cheap matsushita mic....or something like that) . When he came out with his high end binaural made with DPA 4061(or 4060 more sensitive model), I’m pretty sure I purchased his first set.

http://www.core-sound.com/default.php

Also shown are a few others, including one recording made with the same mic model (and its own PS/processing box) that recorded the cowboy junkies trinity sessions. You cant see from the pics, but there are 4 caps in a tetrahedral arrangement (Len as some as well as octamics) and from these 4 mic diaphragms, multiple picked patterns can be made
http://www.marquetteaudiolabs.com/product_soundfield_st250.html
Neil Young/PJ is Schoeps CMC64(6 body with 4 cap)>Sonosax SX-M2 mic pre/PS> Panasonic SV-255.



Archive on! And if you ever want to upgrade, give Jim or Doug Oade a call, great guys!

https://www.oade.com/